When we examine the origins of Islam, an interesting question emerges: where did Muhammad's stories about Abraham, Moses, Mary, Jesus and the prophets come from?
Islam's answer is straightforward: they were revealed by Allah.
But Muhammad's own contemporaries apparently proposed another explanation—and remarkably, the Qur'an itself preserves their accusations.
This deserves examination without assuming either the Islamic or Christian conclusion beforehand.
“These are tales of the ancients”
One of the clearest passages is Qur'an 25:4–5.
Muhammad's opponents accused him of producing something invented with the assistance of other people:
“This is not except a falsehood he invented, and another people assisted him in it.”
The following verse records an even more specific accusation:
“Legends of the former peoples which he has written down, and they are dictated to him morning and afternoon.”
— Qur'an 25:4–5
But the importance here is that the passage establishes historic evidence about the controversy: people around Muhammad were accusing him of receiving old stories from other human beings.
The expression usually translated “tales/legends of the ancients” (asāṭīr al-awwalīn) occurs repeatedly in the Qur'an.
“A human being teaches him”
Qur'an 16:103 preserves an even more direct accusation:
“It is only a human being who teaches the Prophet.”
The Qur'an responds that the person to whom the opponents were referring spoke a foreign tongue, whereas the Qur'an was in clear Arabic.
Notice what the rebuttal tells us.
The Qur'an doesn't merely answer a vague accusation that Muhammad copied somebody somewhere. It acknowledges that his opponents apparently had a particular person in mind.
Later Islamic commentary preserved this understanding. Ibn Kathir describes the alleged teacher as a foreign man living among Quraysh who sold goods near al-Safa and says Muhammad may sometimes have sat and spoken with him.
But once again the underlying accusation is preserved by Islamic sources themselves:
Someone is teaching Muhammad.
Then comes Sahih al-Bukhari 3617
This makes another Islamic tradition particularly interesting.
Sahih al-Bukhari records the story of a Christian who converted to Islam, learned al-Baqarah and Āl ʿImrān, and “used to write for the Prophet.”
The man later renounced Islam & returned to Christianity.
Bukhari then records him making an extraordinary accusation:
“Muhammad knows nothing but what I have written for him.”
— Sahih al-Bukhari 3617
We must be intellectually fair here.
Bukhari does not tell the story because he believes the Christian.
Quite the opposite. The remainder of the narration claims that after the man's death the earth repeatedly expelled his corpse. Within Bukhari's narrative, this miraculous punishment functions as a vindication of Muhammad and repudiation of the apostate Christian.
But it establishes something nevertheless remarkable:
Islamic tradition preserved an accusation from a former Christian associated with Muhammad's writing process that Muhammad's knowledge depended upon what that Christian had written for him.
That allegation deserves to be considered alongside Qur'an 16:103 and 25:4–5.
An Arabian religion acquires biblical history
Now consider the larger historical picture.
Muhammad belonged to Quraysh in Mecca.
Islam subsequently places Mecca inside the history of Abraham and Ishmael. Qur'an 2:127 explicitly portrays Abraham and Ishmael raising the foundations of “the House,” understood in Islamic tradition as the Kaaba.
Yet the biblical account of Abraham nor the Torah contains no journey to Mecca, construction of the Kaaba or institution of the Meccan pilgrimage.
Genesis provides extensive narratives concerning Abraham and Ishmael, but it doesn't supply the Islamic Meccan continuation.
But it creates an important historical question:
Where is the independently demonstrable bridge connecting Abraham and Ishmael to Mecca and ultimately Quraysh?
The Bible & the Torah does not support these claims.
Meanwhile, the Qur'an is filled with biblical characters
The Qur'an's sacred history is populated by figures already known from Jewish and Christian traditions:
Adam
Noah
Abraham
Ishmael
Isaac
Jacob
Joseph
Moses
Aaron
David
Solomon
Jonah
Zechariah
John
Mary
Jesus
But the Islamic versions don't always reproduce the earlier traditions.
Sometimes they substantially reinterpret them.
And sometimes Islamic literature contains stories about biblical characters that aren't found in the Bible at all.
Moses and the runaway stone
Sahih al-Bukhari 3404 tells a story in which Israelites suspected Moses of concealing a physical defect because he wouldn't bathe naked with them.
According to the hadith, Moses placed his clothes upon a stone while bathing.
The stone ran away with his clothes.
Moses chased it naked, demanding his garment back, until Israelites saw his body and realized that he had no physical defect. Moses subsequently struck the stone with his staff.
Sahih Muslim 339 also preserves the tradition.
This isn't the Moses narrative Christians or Jews encounter in the Torah.
It belongs to the later Islamic presentation of Moses.
Jesus also acquires additional stories
The same phenomenon occurs with Jesus.
The Qur'an contains episodes absent from the canonical New Testament, including the infant Jesus speaking from the cradle and the miracle involving a bird fashioned from clay.
This becomes historically interesting because stories resembling some Qur'anic episodes circulated in extra-biblical Christian traditions before Islam.
Similarity alone does not demonstrate direct copying. But it raises a legitimate historical question:
Why do traditions circulating among Jews and Christians before Muhammad reappear, sometimes transformed, inside the new Arabian revelation?
Two explanations
At this point there are fundamentally different ways of interpreting the evidence.
The Islamic explanation
Muslims believe Abraham, Moses and Jesus were genuine prophets of Allah.
According to Islam, Muhammad wasn't borrowing their histories.
Allah was revealing the true history of those prophets again, correcting distortions that had accumulated among earlier religious communities.
From this perspective, similarities between the Qur'an and earlier traditions are exactly what should be expected.
The historical-critical challenge
A critic can propose a different explanation.
Muhammad lived in a world where Jewish, Christian and other Late Antique religious traditions circulated orally and textually. Biblical characters and extra-biblical legends could therefore have entered his religious environment.
The Qur'an itself shows that Muhammad's opponents accused him of exactly this sort of human transmission:
“Another people assisted him.” — Q 25:4
“Legends of the former peoples… dictated to him.” — Q 25:5
“It is only a human being who teaches him.” — Q 16:103
And centuries later, the canonical hadith collection Sahih al-Bukhari preserved the accusation of a former Christian writer:
“Muhammad knows nothing but what I have written for him.” — Bukhari
The Qur'an itself shows that Muhammad was confronted with accusations of human teachers and pre-existing stories during the emergence of Islam.
The question becomes bigger than one storyteller
The deeper question therefore isn't simply:
“Did Muhammad copy the Bible?”
The historical question is more sophisticated:
How did an Arabian religious movement centered upon Mecca come to incorporate an enormous Jewish and Christian sacred history, while simultaneously revising that history and placing Abraham and Ishmael at the foundation of the Meccan sanctuary?
Qur'an 2:127 says Abraham and Ishmael raised the foundations of the House.
Qur'an 25:4–5 simultaneously preserves opponents accusing Muhammad of receiving ancient stories with human assistance.
Qur'an 16:103 acknowledges the allegation that a particular human being was teaching him and rejects it.
Bukhari 3617 later preserves an accusation from an apostate Christian writer associated with Muhammad himself.
These passages do not automatically tell us which explanation is correct.
But they demonstrate that questions about Muhammad's sources existed within Islam's own foundational literature.
And that makes the comparison worth investigating rather than dismissing.
Read the sources. Compare the stories.
Christians need not ridicule Muslims to question Islam.
Muslims need not be ridiculed for believing Muhammad received revelation.
The claims themselves can be tested.
Put the Torah beside the Qur'an.
Put the New Testament beside the Qur'an.
Compare Abraham.
Compare Moses.
Compare Mary.
Compare Jesus.
Then examine what Muhammad's contemporaries are reported to have said about where these stories were coming from.
The most powerful question is simply:
If this was a new revelation from God restoring an ancient truth, why were Muhammad's contemporaries already saying, “We have heard these stories before”?
The Torah was nearly 2000 years old sacred scriptures of the Jews ported and additional stories and narrative added.
The Bible was 600 year old scripture which has been ported with additional changes and new narratives.
Muhammed's narrated changes to Trinity & Jesus relationship and Sonship of God:
Quran 4:171 O People of the Book! Do not go to extremes regarding your faith; say nothing about Allah except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was no more than a messenger of Allah and the fulfilment of His Word through Mary and a spirit ˹created by a command˺ from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers and do not say, “Trinity.” Stop!—for your own good. Allah is only One God. Glory be to Him! He is far above having a son! To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. And Allah is sufficient as a Trustee of Affairs.
Again Muhammed narrated changes about the crucifixion & death on the cross:
Quran 4:157 and for boasting, “We killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.” But they neither killed nor crucified him—it was only made to appear so. Even those who argue for this ˹crucifixion˺ are in doubt. They have no knowledge whatsoever—only making assumptions. They certainly did not kill him.
Where did Muhammed get the authority to change scriptures? How can an illiterate man, a story teller modify ancient scriptures through his scribes into the arabic language and establish a new religion?
We see similar Christian offshoot removing books, however none changed core doctrines and representation of Christ.
Read. Compare. Question.
Truth should withstand examination.
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